


The New Girl

by Fogfire



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 13:13:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16388375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fogfire/pseuds/Fogfire





	The New Girl

Starfleet Academy has seen a lot of weird incidents over the years. You’ve witnessed the trial over Cadet Kirk cheating the Kobayashi Maru yourself and the tales of Cadet Montgomery Scott’s adventures are still told during meetings.

Your coworker storming into your office to warn you that “The new girl will pull a Scotty on us!” wasn’t really surprising after all. He liked to warn you every single semester but so far only a few of those warnings turned out to be true.

You put down your PADD to look at him. “Do you want me to take a look at her?”

“No, no, take your time, I’ll be right!” He claims before leaving towards his own office. Now your curiosity is piqued.

-

It’s not easy to find her. She knows to keep to herself.

Her name is Jaylah, you learn, when she steps into your classroom, her posture straight and a bit intimidating, but her eyes betraying that impression. Her eyes tell you that she’s not quite sure of this yet, her eyes look for a way out before she’s even fully in the room. Her eyes lock on you and you’re unable to keep up the forced smile you had been carrying before. Monday mornings, early classes and old injuries don’t go well together.

“I’m Y/N,” you tell her, offering her your hand. She doesn’t take it.

“Are you a teacher?” She asks, stepping closer, “Or a student?”

“Your professor,” you tell her and can’t help to smile for real when she looks you up and down a second time, clearly not believing you.

“You’re as old as me, right?”

“I guess. You’re new to Starfleet Academy?”

“James T. has sent me.”

“Kirk?” You bite back a sigh. That can only mean trouble.

Jaylah is your best student. She’s good in everything she does, as long as she’s interested in it. Or deems it necessary.

She moves gracefully and you’re not surprised to find her working out with the security officers when you walk by on your way to therapy.

She’s got a knack for languages and the xenolinguistics professor raves about the fact that Jaylah did not only learn English from the audio logs of the USS Franklin, but also teaches her professor the languages of her own family, Krall and some other species she had encountered before coming to earth.

In the end, you’re not the least bit surprised when Jaylah does pull a Scotty on you during one of your engineering workshops.

She had gone from introductory classes to advanced classes in the matter of a few months and seemed to work away with her peers on the task of building a simple phaser from scratch.

But when you walked past the workbenches you realized that whatever she was making, couldn’t be a phaser.

“Jaylah?” You address her, focusing on her nose to avoid being distracted by her eyes, “How’s the phaser coming along?”

She’s smirking at you, turning around the device she had been fiddling with.

“It is a replicator,” she tells you.

“But what about the Phaser?” You remind her and she programmes the device to replicate one for her while keeping her gaze locked on you the whole time.

Indeed, a classic Scotty.

“I want to talk to you after your classes for the day are over,” you tell her and step away from her workbench, leaving her to tinker with the things she has. If the girl wants, she could probably build a transwarp platform out of the replicator anyway.

By the time her last class ends, you’re in your office, correcting tests on your PADD.

You have an eye on the Replicator she had left on her workbench but it had been too distracting to keep it in your own office, therefore it’s now right outside your see-through office door on the table of the common room.

“You wanted to talk to me?” Jaylah asks when she steps into your office. You’ve given up forcing a smile around her. It’s hard enough to stay calm when she’s near you.

“Yes. I’ve asked for a transfer.”

“A transfer?”

“Yes. Normally, if we get a student that is as talented as you, we offer them a transfer. If you’d want to focus on engineering as your major, I’d advise you to go to Mexico, they have the best professors for that classes down there.”

“Mexico?” She looks as confused as you’d hoped she would.

“Well, I understand that you might not want to leave the Academy so soon after you’ve made it here. Therefore I asked for a transfer for myself instead. If you’re accepting the offer I could switch places with Admiral Abascal. That would give you the opportunity to take some even more advanced classes in engineering.”

“But… you would have to go Mexico?”

You force a smile that must probably look like you’re hurting.

“Only for the duration of your stay at the Academy. I’m astonished that they would let me go down to Mexico anyway, but I could learn a great deal down there and be a better professor when you come back.”

A part of you wants her to realize why you’re offering this to her. But the way bigger part of you doesn’t want her to know that you’re really pathetic enough that you have to flee her presence to be able to deal with whatever you’re feeling for her. Same age or not, she’s still a student and you’re a professor.

“I can learn from you.”

“You can build a transportable replicator from scratch, I don’t think there’s anything else left I could teach you.”

“But you are a professor at your age. You must be smart.”

“Thank you for that compliment,” you tell her, “But I don’t think I would have been a professor by now if I hadn’t been the only one lucky enough to survive an attack on our ship. Giving me that job seemed a good idea at that time.”

“What would you be instead if you could?”

“Head of the engineering department of the Enterprise,” you tell her without needing a second you think. You think of that too often anyway.

She leans back in her seat and you close her eyes to calm yourself down.

“Please accept that offer,” you tell her after a second, “If not for yourself, do it for me.”

She takes the PADD with the form, holding it carefully, almost as if she’s scared.

“I’ll think about it.”

You nod and she gets up to leave. You can feel her eyes on you, just as if she’s turned around one last time, and then the door closes behind her.

“Can someone tell me why this coffee tastes like apples?” You hear your coworker ask through the closed door and you know, you just know, that he must have gotten the coffee from Jaylah’s replicator, but you don’t have it in you to answer him.


End file.
